Our Mission

ExCITE is organized for the purpose of facilitating the successful acceleration of
startup companies engaged in entrepreneurial research and development of advanced
technologies with the intent to create high technology jobs in the county of Riverside.

Events

Events & Meetups

Who We Are

Executive Director

Taj Ahmad Eldridge

Taj Ahmad Eldridge is currently part of the Steering Committee for the Highlander Venture Fund
dedicated to investing in startups at the University of California Riverside. Taj is also a
partner with the ExCITE Incubator also affiliated with the University of California Riverside.
Taj previously served as equity partner and interim COO with Waraire Boswell
and BoswellOfficial for Waraire Boswell Industries, an apparel
firm based in Los Angeles under two brands – the modern luxury high end brand WaraireBoswell and
the younger demographic athleisure brand BOSWELL. He is also working with wine curation start up
I Like This Grape, owned by ILTG Media, Inc. He also mentors Voter
and is a board member in Xtopoly, and FarmSense.
Taj is also Advisor in Residence for the Leatherby Center for Entrepreneurship
as well as serves as a judge for the California Dreamin’ Business Plan Competition, the UCLA/Knapp
Venture Capital competition, and Big Ideas Berkeley.

Board of Directors

Rosibel Ochoa

Angelov Farooq

Steve Massa

Rob Moran

Jamie Robinson

Treasurer

Brian Hawley

President

Sean Varner

Secretary

Volunteers

Ryan Stegmann

Front-end Developer

Ivan Meza

Social Media

What We Offer

ExCITE is currently located in a 5,000 sq. foot ADA compliant facility with 5 office spaces, a teleconference/podcast room, 1 conference room, and a common break area. In partnership with the County of Riverside next door, ExCITE residents have access to printers, fax machines, copiers, and additional conference rooms. We also have a ping pong table to allow our entrepreneurs to showcase their other skills! Founders can spend less time worrying about the high cost of rent and focus on their innovations.

Resident startups at ExCITE receive over $200,000 in valued free or discounted services from our trusted partners. In 2018, we plan on increasing our partnerships to provide our residents even more services. Some of our partners include these and many more:

Stripe Atlas (Legal)

SendGrid (Outbound Marketing)

Moss Adams (Accounting)

Knobbe Martin (Intellectual Property)

Trinet (Human Resources)

ExCITE also serves as a hub of innovation activity in the thriving and supportive community, which help each other approach obstacles from different perspectives. This creation of an interdisciplinary environment contributes to our community norm of trust and information sharing. In order to achieve this, we host community focused events to encourage entrepreneurship within the community such as:

1 Million Cups - a Kauffman Initiative

TechStars Startup Week

TechMeetups including Riverside.IO, WordPress Meetup, and more

Sponsor (with resident startups pitching) of SF & NY Venture Summit

What We Offer

ExCITE is a new 6 - 12 month startup accelerator program and facility for technology startups, offering services and mentorships aimed at one goal - to accelerate the growth of successful new technology companies that will change their industries.

Every 6 months, ExCITE Accelerator selects the most innovative companies from Inland Southern California and supports their growth with access to liquidity opportunities, professional & strategic resources, mentorship, network, and community.

Through the ExCITE program, we provide access to a wide network of lab space, specialized equipment, business guidance, and other resources.

We seek to introduce startups to their entrepreneurial peers, and to established companies, in innovation clusters across the region, state and around the world. We seek to power a network of innovation networks.

Bold entrepreneurs and change agents bring their knowledge and ingenuity to bear on humanity’s great challenges every day. ExCITE seeks to help them on the journey from ideation to realization.

Blue

Bluetooth Ambient Social Network.

Follow-Mee, inc. is a technology company that opens new market space with Blue, the first Bluetooth Ambient Social Network. Social Media and Bluetooth are converging rapidly and there are two new markets emerging which are going to become platforms for the next generation apps - social and beacons. Blue is an innovative mobile app that introduces you up to 150 feet using Bluetooth Low-energy technology. We believe that reinventing the name tag is our greatest opportunity to maximize our social opportunity by empowering users to Be Social once introduced through Blue.

DeepBits

Innovate the analytics for securer cyberspace.

Backed by over ten years’ top-notch research on cybersecurity analytics techniques funded by NSF, DARPA, ONR, AFRL, etc., DeepBits Technology LLC is revolutionizing the way customers build cybersecurity solutions by providing the fundamental security analytics tools. Our solution reduces the R&D expenditure of our customers and lowers entry bar of the increasing cybersecurity market. With the lowered entry bar, we anticipate that more innovations will be put into practice. As a result, with the increased competition and reduced R&D expenditure, we expect to reduce the cybersecurity spending of the companies and government.

FarmSense

SmartBot360

Create, manage and share AI chatbots.

SmartBot360 is a UCR spin-off company. It has developed a platform to create, manage and share AI chatbots. The platform empowers customer agents to increase the number of reached customers, by offloading routine interactions to the AI-powered chatbots. Chatbots and humans work together through easy to define triaging handover protocols. The intuitive Web-based SmartBot360™ Management Dashboard™ is the control panel of the platform, which allows monitoring and analyzing ongoing sessions, starting new chatbot campaigns, and directly chatting with the customers.

Neighmo

Targeted-Marketing and Lead Generation Platform for Residential Real Estate.

Neighmo is a Targeted-Marketing and Lead Generation Platform for Residential Real Estate. Agents, Brokers, and Investors can now harness the power of big data and predictive analytics to identify likely sellers in a given neighborhood and generate micro-targeted marketing lists to save money and improve response rates on direct-mail campaigns.

ZyBooks

Proven to inspire success and save time.

Driving the engine behind zyBooks are instructors who know that students learn by doing. zyBooks bridges barriers between instructors and students, re-energizing the classroom and yielding stronger academic results.

VNergy

An electricity management platform.

VNenergy provides an AI enhanced energy management platform for business to save energy on their electricity bill. This platform utilizes AI and IoT coupled with a battery energy storage system to shave demand charges and lower costs on electricity use.

Kids That Code

We plant the seeds, you watch them grow!

Kids That Code, Inc. offers unique programs in which children are introduced to computer programming, game design, mobile app development and much more. These programs are offered at local schools, college campuses, and other educational institutions. We offer after-school programs, weekend workshops, spring, summer and winter camps.